Associate Professor Lucy Potter from the University of Adelaide is the leader of a team that has developed a MOOC (massive open online course) called Shakespeare Matters. The MOOC is the first on Shakespeare from an Australian university, and will be available on the EdX platform. It is scheduled to launch on 14 December 2017, and is now open for enrolments. To see the promo video and to enrol, click on the following link.Shakespeare Matters MOOC launching 14 December enrol now!

Once enrolled, you will have access to numerous resources that you will be free to use can in teaching Shakespeare, and other early modern English playwrights. The MOOC focuses on emotions in Shakespeare’s plays, and has been developed with an emphasis on student co-creation. Please share information about this MOOC with your students, friends, and networks.

Lucy will present a paper on the MOOC at the February 2018 ANZSA conference.

Ceræ: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies invites essay submissions for Volume Five on the theme of ‘Representations and Recollections of Empire’.

In its broadest sense, empire as a term is used to describe a state or cluster of lands and states ruled by a monarch or emperor. With its implications of wide and far reaching dominion, empire as a concept also lends itself to a broad range of subject areas that may consider a number of cultural groups and historical periods, concepts of power and dominance, influence and control. Topics may include but are not limited to:

-representations of cultural legacy and achievement in claims to power

-studies in the visual, literary and material culture of empire

-the birth of Renaissance humanism with its focus on classical notions of civic duty

-religious appropriations of the imperial claim to political supremacy

-medieval romance and epic as genres innovating on classical styles and themes

-the imperialist legacy in early colonial propaganda

As an interdisciplinary journal, Ceræ encourages submissions across the fields of art history, literature, politics, intellectual history, social studies and beyond.

Articles should be approximately 5000-7000 words. Further details regarding submission and author guidelines including the journal style sheet can be found online at http://openjournals.arts.uwa.edu.au/index.php/cerae/about/submissions.The deadline for themed submissions is 30 November 2017. Non-themed submissions are welcome at any point throughout the year.

ESSAY PRIZES

Ceræ is delighted to offer two prizes each for Volume 5:

The first prize, of $200 (AUD), will be awarded to the best article submitted by a graduate student, and is sponsored by the University of Western Australia Graduate Research School. This award may be given to either a themed or non-themed submission.

The second prize, also of $200 (AUD), will be awarded to the best essay on the theme of ‘Representations and Recollections of Empire’ by a graduate student or early-career researcher.

Further enquiries are welcome and can be directed to the editor ateditorcerae@gmail.com.

OPEN OPPORTUNITIES

Administered from the University of Western Australia, Cerae is an open-access, peer reviewed journal directed by a committee of interstate and international graduate students and early career researchers. We are united in our commitment to open access publishing, the possibilities of the digital humanities, and to forging a strong community of medieval and early modern scholars.

Volunteering for Cerae will give you invaluable experience in operating a journal – from drafting calls for papers, to the review process, through to copyediting – all skills which will make you more competitive in the academic job market. It will also give you the chance to make a difference and work with a very passionate and dedicated team.

To nominate yourself for a role, please email ceraejournal@gmail.com by 25th September 2017.

DEPUTY EDITOR

We are looking for a reliable, motivated volunteer to work closely with the Editor to prepare each volume for publication. The Deputy Editor will:

- Arrange the provisional screening and peer review of articles.

- Liaise between reviewers and authors to finalise articles for publication.

- Organise the typesetting and copyediting of articles.

This role requires <2 hours per week.

SECRETARY

We are looking for a reliable, motivated volunteer, ideally based at the University of Western Australia, to take care of the administrative tasks involved in running the journal. The Secretary:

- Monitors our main email account

- Organises meetings, writes agendas, and takes minutes as needed

- Oversees our ‘virtual office’

- Maintains contact lists

- Is the central hub of information management

This role requires a minimum of 2 hours per week.

TREASURER

We are looking for a reliable, motivated volunteer, ideally based at the University of Western Australia, to take care of the accounting tasks involved in running the journal. The Treasurer:

- Keeps records of incoming/outgoing funds

- Organises payments and receipts as necessary

- Generates a basic financial report annually

- Disburses prizes to our winners

- Works closely with the Fundraising Officer

This role requires <1 hr weekly, especially between the EOFY and our AGM.

FUNDRAISING OFFICER

We are looking for a reliable, motivated volunteer to identify sources of funding to support the journal’s running costs. The Fundraising Officer will:

- Find and apply for prizes or grants aimed at graduate student organizations.

The convenors of the 2018 ANZSA conference, ‘Shakespeare at Play’, are extending the Call For Papers until Monday 04 September 2017.

Many of our friends in the northern hemisphere in particular are travelling for research during their summer, and some have asked for more time to submit abstracts for consideration. By extending the CFP to accommodate these colleagues, we also welcome late submissions from anyone closer to home (ANZ) who may still be wishing to present a paper.

‘Shakespeare at Play’
ANZSA 2018
The University of Melbourne
8-10 February 2018

20 minute papers are now invited for the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association (ANZSA) biennial conference. Papers might consider (but are not restricted to) these or any related topics:

plays
players
swordplay
early modern plays
Shakespeare in plays
playfulness
playwriting
play on words
play-based learning
playing tricks
playwrights
playbooks
playback theatre
Melbourne: capital of cultural and sporting play
improvisational play
getting played
game-play

Inquiries and proposals (200 words + 50 word bio) should be sent to David McInnis (mcinnisd@unimelb.edu.au) by Monday 04 September 2017.

Organising Committee:

Gayle Allan, Deputy Dean, Trinity College, University of Melbourne

Rob Conkie, Senior Lecturer – Theatre and Drama, La Trobe University

David McInnis, Gerry Higgins Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies, University of Melbourne

Paul Salzman, Emeritus Professor of English Literature, La Trobe University

Ian McEwan’s recent novel Nutshell (2016), in which Hamlet is an unborn foetus, is only the latest in a line of appropriations of Shakespeare’s plays stretching back to 1600. Hamlet itself stretches beyond the seventeenth century, drawing on sources that date back to twelfth-century Denmark, and referring within itself to relics of older drama that Shakespeare may have seen as a boy in Stratford. Hamlet looks both backwards and forwards in time. The play also covers a remarkable range of emotional states, including anger, love, hatred, grief, melancholy and despair. Indeed, Hamlet stages a plethora of emotional practices: a funeral and a marriage, a vindictive ghost in purgatory, a young woman whose mental equilibrium has been dislodged by the murder of her father by her own erstwhile lover, an inscrutable monarch under suspicion of murder, a couple of mordantly cheerful gravediggers, and a young prince back from university and grieving for his deceased father. This symposium invites new readings of the play, focusing on any aspect of its emotional life in the widest sense.

We envisage papers from a range of disciplines and points of view, which may contribute to any of the Centre’s four research programs – Meanings, Change, Performance or Shaping the Modern. Some possible areas of discussion are mentioned below, but they are by no means exclusive. We aim at producing a book proposal, so completed papers ready for publication will save time when approaching a publisher. Please send proposals for 20-minute papers, including a title and presenter details, to Paul Megna (paul.megna.uwa.edu.au) by Tuesday 28 February 2017.

*How scholarship on the history of the emotions can help us to better understand Hamlet and vice versa
*Emotional regimes, communities and practices in Hamlet
*Emotions and language
*Hamlet, melancholy and depression
*Female consciousness
*Revenge and anger in Hamlet
*Hamlet and non-Shakespearean Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre and literature
*Emotional accounts of the afterlife and other religious ideas in Hamlet
*Hamlet’s emotional medievalism and allusions to medieval drama
*Nostalgia in Hamlet, as well as nostalgia for Hamlet in adaptations, appropriations and re-writings
*Gendered emotion in Hamlet and its descendants
*Emotional reactions to Hamlet through the centuries
*Hamlet’s influence on theories of emotion
*Emotions in adaptations of Hamlet (including novels, movies, popular culture).
*Staging of passions, perturbations, affections, etc.

After a year-long celebration of the quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s death, it’s time to move from reflection to future directions. What will Shakespearean text and performance look like, beyond the 400 year anniversary? This symposium will draw on the expertise of its four keynote speakers to focus on questions of editing and performance.

“Canon, Chronology and Collaboration in Shakespeare’s Early Career”
Dr Will Sharpe (Shakespeare Institute)

“Shakespeare and the Digital Sphere: Performance and the Public in the RSC/Google+’s Midsummer Night’s Dreaming”
Dr Erin Sullivan (Shakespeare Institute)

Venue/Date:
University of Melbourne
15 November 2016

If you would like to present a paper, proposals for short, 10 minute papers are now invited. Please send your name, a 100 word bio, and a 200 word (max) abstract to Miriam Webster (miriam.webster@unimelb.edu.au) by Monday 01 August 2016.

NB. This symposium has been scheduled such that ANZSA delegates heading to Hamilton (http://conference.anzsa.org/) can come to Melbourne first, spend the following day (16 Nov) in transit, and arrive comfortably for the start of the ANZSA conference at the University of Waikato.

If you’re near Melbourne on the deathiversary, come along and help Rob Conkie launch his new book, Writing Performative Shakespeares: New Forms for Performance Criticism (Cambridge University Press, 2016). This also happens to work in conjunction with the opening of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor which is playing at fortyfivedownstairs this April, and which Rob has directed. This production ties in with the Shakespeare400 celebrations happening world-wide.

The gala event will be taking place on April 23rd, at 3:30PM at fortyfivedownstairs with the book launch, an art exhibition by Bernard Caleo of drawings of the rehearsal process of The Merry Wives of Windsor will follow 4:30PM and an exhibition talk: ‘Drawing and rehearsing The Merry Wives’ at 5:30PM.